Another year down, and another wonderful Christmas Eve service(s) experienced by thousands of people at The Meeting House.
Every year, we seem to "outdo" ourselves in terms of production, complexity, and "wow" factor..... all the things that Jesus' birth WASN'T. So this year, we decided to take a simpler approach (in some ways it was simple, and in some, not so much - LOL!)
This year's Christmas Eve at The Meeting House was called "Down to Earth". We tried to convey a more organic, family feeling - as opposed to the highly technical "events" of the past 2 years.
In many ways, we succeeded. And still in some ways, it was quite technical and "wow" factor-ish. And through it all, (surprise surprise) God showed up!
The evening consisted of music (corporate singing and performance) storytelling, a meditation by Brux, and more singing. Pretty simple stuff. But still delivered Meeting House style.
In years past, we haven't done much traditional decoration. So this year, in keeping with the theme, we decided to do Christmas trees. And when you have a 50x75 ft stage with almost 24 ft of ceiling height, if you are gonna do trees, you gotta REALLY do trees. So I put a forest on stage. :)
Above you'll see an 18 ft tree, a 12 ft tree, and several 6 to 8 ft trees.... all with lights. They are all real trees. A guy from the church with a 20 ft tilt-n-load flatbad drove an hour north of Toronto with me to pick them up from a tree farm. Then we used a boom lift to hoist the big ones into the air and we suspended them with steel cable. The picture doesn't show, but there was another 18 ft tree out in the foyer.
Then came the lights - hundreds of feet of lights. Yikes.
As usual, Dave's lighting was wonderful and really created the mood.
Craig's band was killer, of course.
And the Great Wooden Trio (of which there are four guys, not three!) were the perfect guests for our program, singing and storytelling.
I trust that God was present to the thousands who came. I know that he was with me and my production team.... empowering us to serve Him with excellence.
Thanks be to God for his incarnation among us. And thanks to Him for the opportunity to worship him in our own style again this year.
A few more pictures to follow...
Bruxy and baby Maya
Great Wooden Trio
Craig & Band
